According to the World Health Organization (WHO), ischemic heart disease, stroke, lower respiratory infections, chronic obstructive lung disease, diarrheal diseases and HIV/AIDS have remained the top major killers worldwide during the past decade. Lung cancers, along with trachea and bronchus cancers, are also a major cause of death. For example, these cancers caused 1.5 million deaths globally in 2011. In general, cancer is considered a worldwide epidemic with 14.1 million adult diagnoses and 8.2 million adult deaths occurring in 2012. The WHO expects these numbers to climb dramatically over the next two decades. Estimates from the WHO suggest a rise from 14.1 million cancer cases annually to 22 million within the next 20 years. Furthermore, cancer deaths are expected to rise from 8.2 million to 13 million deaths per year. Cancer is not only deadly to the world's population; it is hitting the world's wallet at an estimated $1.16 trillion, just in the year 2010 alone.
With such a large portion of the world's population being diagnosed with cancer and other diseases, doctors require a reliable and efficient method for treating cancer and other diseases. One method that has recently been employed to treat patients is the use of decision trees. Decision trees are commonly used in decision analysis to help identify a strategy most likely to reach a goal. For example, cancer decision trees have recently been used by some medical facilities, such as the Moffitt Cancer Center. Decision trees allow for a step-by-step process in treating cancer and other diseases by allowing the physician to follow the specific symptoms of a particular patient and thereby tailor a specific treatment for that individual patient. However, the use of decision trees by physicians is accomplished by the physician manually following a specific decision tree. As the decision trees are utilized manually, there is room for improvement upon this approach. For example, integrating the specific decision tree for a patient into the patient's electronic medical record (EMR) can greatly aid physicians. The integration of the decision tree into the patient's EMR allows for an electronic approach to utilizing the decision tree. This integration also allows for a simpler approach to modifying or changing a particular decision tree, as needed, compared to the manual approach.